It's a losing battle without NPC Control. I do not use it myself, because it always conflicted with something, either other mods or the GTW careers. But if townie control is your top priority, then this is the one mod.
Alternately what I sometimes do is using MCCC to copy over the appearance, outfit and traits of one of my own sims, then pretend the bartender /DJ etc. is this particular sim (I picked this tactic up from the Sims 2 community, where it's done with SimPE). Of course that method isn't optimal if the original sim is also present at the venue. But I also have generic service androids whose faces work well for this purpose.